Stop your mess!

Listen…obedience is hard. It’s hard when people don’t understand your why but you still have to do it. It’s hard when your yes makes others uncomfortable. It’s hard when you have to leave what you know because the unknown holds your destiny. Yep...obedience is hard. The last year of my life has been a study in hearing the hard instruction and saying yes. It has meant lost relationships, lonely moments, and hard conversations. It has meant understanding that what God had for me was more important than what people felt about me. Let me tell you…not fun! But what I have come to know more than anything else is that my obedience is enough. My willingness to follow God’s lead is exactly what He wants from me and it is what He wants from you. You see, at the end of the day, your feelings don’t matter. Why someone did what they did doesn’t change what God told you to do with the information. Your response is what He is looking at. I’m learning that God’s plan for my life doesn’t always include the outcomes that I want or think they should be. Things don’t always look how I want them to but if I do what He says, the end result is always the right one.

I want to briefly point something out to you that I just really noticed today. It’s the why that I have often sought when thinking about my life. Hebrews 5:7-9 says, “While Jesus was here on earth, He offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the One who could rescue Him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.”(NLT) It was through those hard beatings and the taunts, that Jesus saw why He had to obey. It was through the doubt and the abandonment that He saw why humankind needed a savior. It was the challenges to His deity and the questions about His power that made His yes make sense. Because of those lessons, God exalted Him and lifted Him up as the One that we all must obey. Out of His suffering came obedience and from there qualification and elevation. Don't you think your obedience is worth it?

Oh yeah! There are some of you that have gotten this obedience all wrong. The Bible didn’t say stay and suffer. This verse said the suffering birthed the obedience. Men and women of God, your obedience is necessary. You can no longer let your comfort or your fear dictate your move. There is too much work to do in the Kingdom for you to keep living in disobedience. So I’m calling you out today! Scared to start your own business even though God told you He would provide? Stop your mess and obey! Stuck in a dead place when God has shown you life? Stop your mess and obey! Been holding on to that blank school application for 2 years but won’t turn it in even though God showed you the perfect program? Stop your mess and obey!   I’m sorry that I don’t have anything soothing to say. I’m just plum out of soothing! It’s time for action and I mean NOW. You have waited long enough! Let me help you out before I close. Ready?  I made it and so will you. I know what it is to survive hard instructions and thrive. You just have to do it!   I am now free to be who Ebony Bryant was called to be because I said yes! I know that God desires the same for you.

Amen